Hackers Make Off with $23.5M From Israel-Based Crypto Exchange

Hackers have stolen about $23.5 million in cryptocurrency from users on Bancor, an Israel-based decentralized exchange platform.

The company said in a statement that the security breach led to the loss of $12.5 million in Ether, $1 million in Pundi X’s NPXS token and $10 million in Bancor’s BNT. The network has been offline since the security breach, but Bancor indicated in a tweet on Tuesday that it was close to resuming service.

We are close to reactivating the Bancor Network. We appreciate your support and the healthy debate on the balance between security and decentralization that has ensued.

In its statement about the breach, Bancor said that it was able to freeze the stolen BNT, but could not do the same for the other tokens that had been swiped.

“The ability to freeze tokens was built into the Bancor Protocal to be used in an extreme situation to recover from a security breach, allowing Bancor to effectively stop the thief from running away with the stolen tokens,” the company said in its statement.

Bancor added that while it could not freeze the other tokens, it was “now working together with dozens of other cryptocurrency exchanges to trace the stolen funds and make it difficult for the thief to liquidate them.”

Bancor raised over $153 million in a initial coin offering last year, according to Quartz.

Photo: Getty iStock

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